Link to original post: [drupal=783]Where The Heart Is Not[/drupal]
Good day, Smashboards.
I assume most people here are from the US. Some of you may be from Canada or Europe. As for me, I live in Asia so I doubt any of you will have heard of me.
Everyone has their own story. Of how they rose to fame and glory as a Smasher, or of how they failed miserably in that endeavour. Some are eventful, some less. Mine is by no means special, but for some reason, I feel compelled to tell you all of it. Also, I have no intentions of bashing anything whatsoever.
I go by the name Backward and I originally knew little to nothing of Smash. To me, it was the game the local game shop would exhibit every now and then (Melee) and like every ten year old boy, I rushed off to play it whenever my parents dropped me off at the shopping mall. I was incredible at the game at first touch. No one else could complete Classic mode without losing a life! My Down-B tactics with Kirby were, after all, absolute genius and Master Hand stood no chance against me.
After three months, the store decided to exhibit another game and Smash exited my life. I felt somewhat disappointed at first, but figured that things came and went. Besides, my new Pokemon game demanded attention.
So years went by. I grew out of games rather prematurely (at the age of 13), started becoming more interested in music, sports and girls. When I turned 15, it seemed that Smash had never been more than a distant and childish memory.
There you have two persons. The little boy who once lingered in the local mall to conquer the evils of a white glove and the teenager who remembers Smash as only a fond but distant memory.
.........
It so happened one day when my class became bored. Our physics teachers had just stormed off and no one really felt like calling him back. What to do? A classmate of mine had the answer within his memory stick.
SSB64.
This was the computer version in which there was no short-hopping (though Z-Cancelling remained). My oblivious 15 year old self, like almost everyone else’s became attracted to this spectacle on the screen as three of my friends played in a FFA, items on, Saffron City. Why on earth did these sprites look so familiar?
Wait! Surely that was Kirby sending DK flying off the screen! And was that Fox sitting on the corner shooting his lasers? Oh, was that a PokeBall?
At that moment Smash made an unusual return to my life. Although I hadn’t gamed for a long time, I was certain that my old exceptional skills would return. I fought against my friends as Fox, who all used a large variety of characters. The best in our class was a Kirby main who mained F-Smash and D-Air, and a Falcon main who always managed to get his Falcon Punchs in. I was about average with my trusty Fox. My Dash Attack chains would get me places at times, but I was never the best. I didn’t really mind, though, since it was all in good fun, and it continued to be so for a few months.
Something snapped.
It was as though a competitive flame had awakened from within me as my friends gradually began to play singles with Hammers and recovery items off. For some reason, I wanted to win more. I remembered the thrill of beating someone.
I quite liked it.
So alongside my usual schedule, I decided to get better at this game with which I felt an extraordinary affinity with. I searched for Smash on Google, and all thanks to my credible luck I ended up at SmashWiki and not Gamefaqs. And it was there after a little aimless ambling about did I discover the memorable page of ‘list of SSB advanced techniques’.
Needless to say, I was confused greatly by all of them to the point of disbelief. Surely these things couldn’t exist and if they did, I did not see the point of many. Not even ones as obvious as Z-Cancelling.
Youtube gave me a clear, shocking example of exactly how effective these techniques could be used. I watched in pure astonishment as Isai’s Pikachu launched these endless combos, using moves I had deemed to be useless, e.g. U-Air, F-Tilt to name a few. I almost missed band practice watching Ness D-Airing his opponent across the stage.
That night I picked up CF and began practicing the basics. I found out for myself the properties of his moves, and more importantly the fundamentals of the game. A week later, I found myself doing some U-Air chains, 0-deathing DK with a final Up-B. Granted though, CPU’s rarely tech nor DI efficiently.
I was prepared the next Monday as the class whipped out yet another thirty minutes of Smash. After a few matches of DK Punch deaths, it was finally my turn. Against the dominant Falcon player. There a few comments of how I would most likely lose and given past records, who could blame them for thinking that?
I selected Falcon and there was a collective wave of ‘oh’s. As though by some strange fate, we chose Dreamland. After a heart-pounding countdown, the match began and my opponent quickly used a Down-B towards me (alright, I just made that up, it may not have been a Down-B).
He got five-stocked. In fact, I destroyed him only taking around 30% and ignored all the item spawns. As the final U-Air to D-Air (SSB Ken combo!) send the impostor black Falcon plummeting to his well-deserved death, curses erupted. No one could comprehend what I’d done. Somehow, the mediocre Fox had managed to pick an unfamiliar character and slaughter the best player in the class.
Life took yet another turning point. I introduced what I’d learnt to my friends and gradually some of them learnt as well. Yet, all but three of them, who would eventually become my crew members, reached the peak of their abilities rather quickly. I suppose not everyone was as fanatical about this game as I was, so I wasn’t overly surprised.
Those three aforementioned people became my regular training partners. We improved quite a great deal throughout the next few months, most notably in our spacing without consciously realizing it. No one we knew could ever take a stock off us without us messing up terribly. It became another part of our lives. Most people knew us as ordinary schoolboys who did stuff everyone else did but some recognized our identities as Smashers.
And this could have been where the story ends. Happy ending. But the chronicles were far from over.
Melee had yet to come in.
64 was satisfying, but the lack of short-hopping made it impossible for us to reach any respectably high level. Our matches were intense, but they were nowhere was intense as Ken versus Bombsoldier on Youtube. And we aspired to reach greater heights. We’d knew for a while then the challenges Melee offered, but could never actually find a time to sit down and play Melee when none of us possessed a GameCube.
The new beginning came a few days before Christmas Eve. When a friend who did have a GameCube invited some people to his place. One of my crew was invited as well and the two of us went there with all the intent of simply having a good time drinking and raving the night away. This we did, but upon eyeing his GameCube and the much coveted copy of Melee the next day, we asked if we could borrow it. Actually, I asked since my friend was suffering from a serious hangover.
Blessings of blessings, he agreed!
The four of us proceeded to leave behind 64 and religiously played Melee. It was a difficult decision to put down a game in which we’d become so dominant at. However, we knew that we would never reach the plateau while continuing to play the way we did in 64, and thus it was abandoned. We read up articles on Smashboards and as our knowledge of the game grew; our skill level grew as well exponentially. We quickly familiarized ourselves with our chosen characters, capped the technical stuff and integrated it into our gameplay.
One of my fondest memories is my 0-death combo on Fox the within the first few weeks I played.
The greatest and perhaps most marvellous coincidence was that our growth rate was more or else the same – each of us had the ability to knock the other three out, save for perhaps a Sheik who almost never managed to beat Foxes, strangely.
And with this, we promptly gained momentum and began to envision a smash scene in our city. We created our gaming aliases, mine being after Forward, whose Falco almost convinced me to switch mains myself. We managed to congregate around ten decent people as well as a number of less decent people. Tournaments were held. Tournaments were won.
By us.
A scene was born. It may have been small, but it was competitive.
We were, once again, enjoying the comforts of Smash. This time, we did not reach a skill peak so swiftly. We were far from it. Every time we played, we improved bit by bit. We read our opponents’ DI better. We began exploiting smaller openings. We spaced better. We employed better options in different situations. We played better.
I hardly have to tell you that we loved it.
It was not without difficulties, though. One crew member almost quit due to the embarrassment of his girlfriend finding out of his (what he perceived to be morbid) hobby. The Sheik main once fell behind in terms of skill and too almost quit; eventually he became better after a while despite never being too proficient at the Fox matchup. I too have had my fair share of reasons for quitting but stuck to Melee in the end, balancing it with my normal life.
It was a side to us that we genuinely, genuinely liked. Call us competitive nuts, but the four of us loved a challenge. As our abilities improved, I could finally compare the best of our matches with those of professionals.
It seemed as though the joy could never end, but I most certainly spoke too soon. My smash career was filled with turning points, ups and downs. Some major; some minor. The advent of Brawl was the biggest one. It was also the very last one.
The four of us made great speculations over Brawl prior to its release. We whole-heartedly believed that this new, flashier game would yet be another challenge which we would overcome once again, this time without starting late as we had with Melee.
I personally had high hopes with it and was looking forward to performing new combos with Marth.
Then it came out and the bombshell dropped.
I felt great unease playing it myself on the first day of release. I loved the songs and somewhat enjoyed the 1P mode but knew a lot was different when we finally began to train. I distinctly recall that fateful moment when my friend left that night, his words resounding in my head.
‘The game style is easy; it’s not like Melee at all.’
A month later, this friend proceeded to return to Melee and upon finding the lack of a scene, quit Smash altogether, along with various reasons I cannot fault him for.
I knew he was right in his evaluation of Brawl, but I wanted this game to progress and I kept up with it hoping for a breakthrough that didn’t came and will likely never come. The more I played, I realized the fundamental errors with it. It was far too easy. Rewards came too easily. Although this is subjective, I also disliked the defensiveness and slowness of the game and its considerable lack of combos.
All this time Smashboards was in a civil war of Brawl versus Melee. Scar’s thread in particular impacted me strongly. Despite being rather disappointed in what Brawl had appeared to be, I kept my faith and took no sides. I preferred Melee a good deal, but fervently hoped for Brawl to show its true colours, as I had so many times those recent months.
Still, I stuck with it, honing my trusty Marth, as did my friends with their Falco and Lucario. My spacing abilities came almost instantly over with Melee, so all that I had to practice was familiarizing myself with Marth’s new game.
All the while, I repeatedly heard negative comments about Brawl and knew myself deep down inside that most of it was true. I refused to accept it though, perhaps for my love of the game.
Smash had never intended to be competitive. Yet for me, Smash had been competitive from the start and surely it would remain so.
Finally, during summer one of my remaining crew members invited some of the old Melee crowd over to his place for some friendlies. I went too, my heart full of eagerness, confident that this would be a gathering of considerable skill, not to mention my yearning for some Melee. I was sure that someone would prove to me the depth of this new smash game.
We were the same circle of Smashers from the Melee, once again assembled under one roof as we had so many times in the past. My heart felt elated. Surely this would show me the worth of Brawl. It might not compare to Melee, but surely it would at least be competitively viable, I thought, as my Marth made his entrance.
I witnessed a night of easy recoveries, lack of combos, easy powershielding, easy chain-grabs and more air-dodges than I could count.
True, I had placed second overall, but that was hardly significant compared to the implications of the days’ matches.
Something snapped, as it had years ago.
This was not the game that I had dedicated myself to. This was a cheap imitation of the Smash franchise.
I used to admire the game in the local store so much.
My non-shorthopping CF in 64 defeated everyone I knew.
I first practiced wavedashing in training mode until it became second nature.
I marvelled over the top players.
My Marth in Melee improved continuously.
My crew struggled and panted, yet rejoiced in our victories.
I recalled all of my past experiences; of how Smash once was.
I gave one final look at a Meta Knight D-Smashing three times in a row. I could feel no affinity with the game.
The next morning, I told the remaining members of my crew of my resignation over breakfast and after a heated debate, TopTires disbanded.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, was officially the end of my Smash career.
.........
It has been more than two years. For more than two years, competitive Smash has been the other side of me. Through one cruel twist of fate, it has disappeared. Is Brawl to blame for this? Perhaps, perhaps not. I still dominate on the rare occasions I play Melee or Brawl, yet as time progresses, I feel my skills diminishing.
I still keep up with Brawl news, but I cannot deny that I have no intention of returning to the Smash scene. I simply cannot submerge myself into such an environment.
The Smash scene.
It is dwindling day by day in my city as I have heard. Many have gotten bored of Brawl and have not returned to Melee either.
I do not doubt that in a years' time or so, this small but talented scene will eventually vanish, just as quickly as it had appeared when a teenager tech'ed for the first time in his life.
My normal life has not changed one bit. I remain the ordinary schoolboy who aims to go to a good university, build up my social networks as well as pursue my interests. Ten years on when we look back, would anyone believe that this man once led another life as Backward?
There you have another two persons. A Smasher who once with his crew, rose to insurmountable challenges and reached high levels of play and a now slightly older teenager who remembers Smash as only a fond but distant memory.
This, Smashboards, is my story.
Good day, Smashboards.
I assume most people here are from the US. Some of you may be from Canada or Europe. As for me, I live in Asia so I doubt any of you will have heard of me.
Everyone has their own story. Of how they rose to fame and glory as a Smasher, or of how they failed miserably in that endeavour. Some are eventful, some less. Mine is by no means special, but for some reason, I feel compelled to tell you all of it. Also, I have no intentions of bashing anything whatsoever.
I go by the name Backward and I originally knew little to nothing of Smash. To me, it was the game the local game shop would exhibit every now and then (Melee) and like every ten year old boy, I rushed off to play it whenever my parents dropped me off at the shopping mall. I was incredible at the game at first touch. No one else could complete Classic mode without losing a life! My Down-B tactics with Kirby were, after all, absolute genius and Master Hand stood no chance against me.
After three months, the store decided to exhibit another game and Smash exited my life. I felt somewhat disappointed at first, but figured that things came and went. Besides, my new Pokemon game demanded attention.
So years went by. I grew out of games rather prematurely (at the age of 13), started becoming more interested in music, sports and girls. When I turned 15, it seemed that Smash had never been more than a distant and childish memory.
There you have two persons. The little boy who once lingered in the local mall to conquer the evils of a white glove and the teenager who remembers Smash as only a fond but distant memory.
.........
It so happened one day when my class became bored. Our physics teachers had just stormed off and no one really felt like calling him back. What to do? A classmate of mine had the answer within his memory stick.
SSB64.
This was the computer version in which there was no short-hopping (though Z-Cancelling remained). My oblivious 15 year old self, like almost everyone else’s became attracted to this spectacle on the screen as three of my friends played in a FFA, items on, Saffron City. Why on earth did these sprites look so familiar?
Wait! Surely that was Kirby sending DK flying off the screen! And was that Fox sitting on the corner shooting his lasers? Oh, was that a PokeBall?
At that moment Smash made an unusual return to my life. Although I hadn’t gamed for a long time, I was certain that my old exceptional skills would return. I fought against my friends as Fox, who all used a large variety of characters. The best in our class was a Kirby main who mained F-Smash and D-Air, and a Falcon main who always managed to get his Falcon Punchs in. I was about average with my trusty Fox. My Dash Attack chains would get me places at times, but I was never the best. I didn’t really mind, though, since it was all in good fun, and it continued to be so for a few months.
Something snapped.
It was as though a competitive flame had awakened from within me as my friends gradually began to play singles with Hammers and recovery items off. For some reason, I wanted to win more. I remembered the thrill of beating someone.
I quite liked it.
So alongside my usual schedule, I decided to get better at this game with which I felt an extraordinary affinity with. I searched for Smash on Google, and all thanks to my credible luck I ended up at SmashWiki and not Gamefaqs. And it was there after a little aimless ambling about did I discover the memorable page of ‘list of SSB advanced techniques’.
Needless to say, I was confused greatly by all of them to the point of disbelief. Surely these things couldn’t exist and if they did, I did not see the point of many. Not even ones as obvious as Z-Cancelling.
Youtube gave me a clear, shocking example of exactly how effective these techniques could be used. I watched in pure astonishment as Isai’s Pikachu launched these endless combos, using moves I had deemed to be useless, e.g. U-Air, F-Tilt to name a few. I almost missed band practice watching Ness D-Airing his opponent across the stage.
That night I picked up CF and began practicing the basics. I found out for myself the properties of his moves, and more importantly the fundamentals of the game. A week later, I found myself doing some U-Air chains, 0-deathing DK with a final Up-B. Granted though, CPU’s rarely tech nor DI efficiently.
I was prepared the next Monday as the class whipped out yet another thirty minutes of Smash. After a few matches of DK Punch deaths, it was finally my turn. Against the dominant Falcon player. There a few comments of how I would most likely lose and given past records, who could blame them for thinking that?
I selected Falcon and there was a collective wave of ‘oh’s. As though by some strange fate, we chose Dreamland. After a heart-pounding countdown, the match began and my opponent quickly used a Down-B towards me (alright, I just made that up, it may not have been a Down-B).
He got five-stocked. In fact, I destroyed him only taking around 30% and ignored all the item spawns. As the final U-Air to D-Air (SSB Ken combo!) send the impostor black Falcon plummeting to his well-deserved death, curses erupted. No one could comprehend what I’d done. Somehow, the mediocre Fox had managed to pick an unfamiliar character and slaughter the best player in the class.
Life took yet another turning point. I introduced what I’d learnt to my friends and gradually some of them learnt as well. Yet, all but three of them, who would eventually become my crew members, reached the peak of their abilities rather quickly. I suppose not everyone was as fanatical about this game as I was, so I wasn’t overly surprised.
Those three aforementioned people became my regular training partners. We improved quite a great deal throughout the next few months, most notably in our spacing without consciously realizing it. No one we knew could ever take a stock off us without us messing up terribly. It became another part of our lives. Most people knew us as ordinary schoolboys who did stuff everyone else did but some recognized our identities as Smashers.
And this could have been where the story ends. Happy ending. But the chronicles were far from over.
Melee had yet to come in.
64 was satisfying, but the lack of short-hopping made it impossible for us to reach any respectably high level. Our matches were intense, but they were nowhere was intense as Ken versus Bombsoldier on Youtube. And we aspired to reach greater heights. We’d knew for a while then the challenges Melee offered, but could never actually find a time to sit down and play Melee when none of us possessed a GameCube.
The new beginning came a few days before Christmas Eve. When a friend who did have a GameCube invited some people to his place. One of my crew was invited as well and the two of us went there with all the intent of simply having a good time drinking and raving the night away. This we did, but upon eyeing his GameCube and the much coveted copy of Melee the next day, we asked if we could borrow it. Actually, I asked since my friend was suffering from a serious hangover.
Blessings of blessings, he agreed!
The four of us proceeded to leave behind 64 and religiously played Melee. It was a difficult decision to put down a game in which we’d become so dominant at. However, we knew that we would never reach the plateau while continuing to play the way we did in 64, and thus it was abandoned. We read up articles on Smashboards and as our knowledge of the game grew; our skill level grew as well exponentially. We quickly familiarized ourselves with our chosen characters, capped the technical stuff and integrated it into our gameplay.
One of my fondest memories is my 0-death combo on Fox the within the first few weeks I played.
The greatest and perhaps most marvellous coincidence was that our growth rate was more or else the same – each of us had the ability to knock the other three out, save for perhaps a Sheik who almost never managed to beat Foxes, strangely.
And with this, we promptly gained momentum and began to envision a smash scene in our city. We created our gaming aliases, mine being after Forward, whose Falco almost convinced me to switch mains myself. We managed to congregate around ten decent people as well as a number of less decent people. Tournaments were held. Tournaments were won.
By us.
A scene was born. It may have been small, but it was competitive.
We were, once again, enjoying the comforts of Smash. This time, we did not reach a skill peak so swiftly. We were far from it. Every time we played, we improved bit by bit. We read our opponents’ DI better. We began exploiting smaller openings. We spaced better. We employed better options in different situations. We played better.
I hardly have to tell you that we loved it.
It was not without difficulties, though. One crew member almost quit due to the embarrassment of his girlfriend finding out of his (what he perceived to be morbid) hobby. The Sheik main once fell behind in terms of skill and too almost quit; eventually he became better after a while despite never being too proficient at the Fox matchup. I too have had my fair share of reasons for quitting but stuck to Melee in the end, balancing it with my normal life.
It was a side to us that we genuinely, genuinely liked. Call us competitive nuts, but the four of us loved a challenge. As our abilities improved, I could finally compare the best of our matches with those of professionals.
It seemed as though the joy could never end, but I most certainly spoke too soon. My smash career was filled with turning points, ups and downs. Some major; some minor. The advent of Brawl was the biggest one. It was also the very last one.
The four of us made great speculations over Brawl prior to its release. We whole-heartedly believed that this new, flashier game would yet be another challenge which we would overcome once again, this time without starting late as we had with Melee.
I personally had high hopes with it and was looking forward to performing new combos with Marth.
Then it came out and the bombshell dropped.
I felt great unease playing it myself on the first day of release. I loved the songs and somewhat enjoyed the 1P mode but knew a lot was different when we finally began to train. I distinctly recall that fateful moment when my friend left that night, his words resounding in my head.
‘The game style is easy; it’s not like Melee at all.’
A month later, this friend proceeded to return to Melee and upon finding the lack of a scene, quit Smash altogether, along with various reasons I cannot fault him for.
I knew he was right in his evaluation of Brawl, but I wanted this game to progress and I kept up with it hoping for a breakthrough that didn’t came and will likely never come. The more I played, I realized the fundamental errors with it. It was far too easy. Rewards came too easily. Although this is subjective, I also disliked the defensiveness and slowness of the game and its considerable lack of combos.
All this time Smashboards was in a civil war of Brawl versus Melee. Scar’s thread in particular impacted me strongly. Despite being rather disappointed in what Brawl had appeared to be, I kept my faith and took no sides. I preferred Melee a good deal, but fervently hoped for Brawl to show its true colours, as I had so many times those recent months.
Still, I stuck with it, honing my trusty Marth, as did my friends with their Falco and Lucario. My spacing abilities came almost instantly over with Melee, so all that I had to practice was familiarizing myself with Marth’s new game.
All the while, I repeatedly heard negative comments about Brawl and knew myself deep down inside that most of it was true. I refused to accept it though, perhaps for my love of the game.
Smash had never intended to be competitive. Yet for me, Smash had been competitive from the start and surely it would remain so.
Finally, during summer one of my remaining crew members invited some of the old Melee crowd over to his place for some friendlies. I went too, my heart full of eagerness, confident that this would be a gathering of considerable skill, not to mention my yearning for some Melee. I was sure that someone would prove to me the depth of this new smash game.
We were the same circle of Smashers from the Melee, once again assembled under one roof as we had so many times in the past. My heart felt elated. Surely this would show me the worth of Brawl. It might not compare to Melee, but surely it would at least be competitively viable, I thought, as my Marth made his entrance.
I witnessed a night of easy recoveries, lack of combos, easy powershielding, easy chain-grabs and more air-dodges than I could count.
True, I had placed second overall, but that was hardly significant compared to the implications of the days’ matches.
Something snapped, as it had years ago.
This was not the game that I had dedicated myself to. This was a cheap imitation of the Smash franchise.
I used to admire the game in the local store so much.
My non-shorthopping CF in 64 defeated everyone I knew.
I first practiced wavedashing in training mode until it became second nature.
I marvelled over the top players.
My Marth in Melee improved continuously.
My crew struggled and panted, yet rejoiced in our victories.
I recalled all of my past experiences; of how Smash once was.
I gave one final look at a Meta Knight D-Smashing three times in a row. I could feel no affinity with the game.
The next morning, I told the remaining members of my crew of my resignation over breakfast and after a heated debate, TopTires disbanded.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, was officially the end of my Smash career.
.........
It has been more than two years. For more than two years, competitive Smash has been the other side of me. Through one cruel twist of fate, it has disappeared. Is Brawl to blame for this? Perhaps, perhaps not. I still dominate on the rare occasions I play Melee or Brawl, yet as time progresses, I feel my skills diminishing.
I still keep up with Brawl news, but I cannot deny that I have no intention of returning to the Smash scene. I simply cannot submerge myself into such an environment.
The Smash scene.
It is dwindling day by day in my city as I have heard. Many have gotten bored of Brawl and have not returned to Melee either.
I do not doubt that in a years' time or so, this small but talented scene will eventually vanish, just as quickly as it had appeared when a teenager tech'ed for the first time in his life.
My normal life has not changed one bit. I remain the ordinary schoolboy who aims to go to a good university, build up my social networks as well as pursue my interests. Ten years on when we look back, would anyone believe that this man once led another life as Backward?
There you have another two persons. A Smasher who once with his crew, rose to insurmountable challenges and reached high levels of play and a now slightly older teenager who remembers Smash as only a fond but distant memory.
This, Smashboards, is my story.
